Letter from John J. Hearne to John A. Costello (Dublin)
(Confidential)

My dear Taoiseach,
I received your kind letter of the 30th April¹ on Tuesday last confirming the splendid news that you and Mrs. Costello are coming to Montreal for the Bar Association Meeting. I had a long conversation with Pearson on Thursday by appointment about your visit. I telegraphed you after my talk with him requesting you to let us know the maximum time you would be able to spend in Canada. I did so, so that I would be in a position to discuss the schedule of a programme for your visit with Mr. St. Laurent today.

Mr. St. Laurent received me this afternoon and we discussed the programme generally.

He desires me to convey to you at once a message of greetings and to assure you of the happiness it will give to the Prime Minister and the Canadian Government to have Mrs. Costello and you as their guests in Canada. He confided to me for your confidential information that Mr. Mackenzie King will still be Prime Minister in August and September even though a new Leader of the Liberal Party will have been elected at the National Liberal Convention to be held early in August.

It is usual for visiting Prime Ministers and their wives to be the guests of the Governor General at Government House during their stay in Ottawa, or during some portion of it. Mr. St. Laurent did not know whether the Governor General will be in residence in Ottawa or at the Citadel in Quebec City while you are here. That will not be settled until after His Excellency's return from Brazil. But His Excellency is to attend the Bar Association Banquet in Montreal. He will therefore be in Eastern Canada during your visit and will invite you to stay either at Government House or at the Citadel. That would be after the C.B.A. Meeting during which you will be the guests of the Bar Association.

The Minister suggested that, unless you are arriving several days before the C.B.A. Meeting begins, you should visit Quebec City immediately after the Meeting. He will discuss the arrangements with Sir Eugene Fisette, Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, later on, and have Premier Duplessis² and Archbishop Roy³ informed. Mr. St. Laurent feels that a visit to the Shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré should be included in the programme of your visit to Quebec. It is within easy distance of the City and September is the pilgrim time.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister King will offer a banquet in the Country Club in your honour. It is there he entertains in the summer months for distinguished visitors as the weather is usually too warm to entertain in town. He would deliver a speech of welcome, and you would reply. There would be no press so far as the speeches are concerned. We have attended most of the comparable functions (those e.g. in honour of the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Yugoslavia, Prime Ministers Smuts, Menzies,⁴ Curtin and Frazer, etc.) since we came here and have never known the speeches to be published. Mr. King likes such occasions, although official, to be intimate and friendly and what is said to be informal and off the record.

We are suggesting that, after Ottawa, you should visit Toronto. The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario has already been privately informed of your visit and has expressed a desire to give you a warm welcome. I have not yet informed Cardinal McGuigan of your visit but shall do so when I am next in Toronto (11th June). There is to be a Provincial General Election in Ontario on the 7th June. We shall then know who the Premier is to be. But from the standpoint of your visit to Toronto it does not matter which Party is returned. You will be equally welcome. John Hackett is the right hand man of Premier Drew who, it is generally believed, will be returned to office.

I shall be grateful, A Thaoisig, if you will advise us, in due course, of your wishes with regard to public addresses over and above your address to the Canadian Bar Association. I do not wish to impose a heavy burden on you in this respect, but I am afraid you cannot, and I am sure you should not, avoid addressing e.g. The Canadian Club of Ottawa. There is, as you know, a Canadian Club in all the larger Canadian Cities which is the usual platform for Prime Ministers and other distinguished guests of the highest rank. If Parliament were sitting you would be requested to address both Houses. But it will not be sitting in August or September; the harvest, this year, is of vital importance. Please let us know, at your convenience, what you desire to have arranged for you in the matter of public addresses. As many, or as few, as you desire to make can be arranged for without difficulty.

With regard to your address to the C.B.A. as to the subject of which you so graciously asked for my view in your letter, the subject that occurred to me at once was 'The Statute of Westminster'. The invitation you received was in the same form as that sent to Lord Simon.⁵ I did not see the invitations: but John Hackett mentioned to me that that was so, and that the C.B.A. was a purely professional organization which traditionally avoided subjects that might be regarded as, in a political sense, controversial. That, of course, would not exclude an address on a subject like the Statute of Westminster which examined the political background of the instrument itself, i.e. its national importance to the countries directly concerned, and its significance in the wider field of international relations. I do not know what you may think of this, but, as your audience will be the legal profession of Canada, I am sure that some such subject as that which I suggest would be of captivating interest. Your own distinguished and, so frequently, decisive part in the discussions of twenty golden years ago and your known association with the late M. Lapointe,⁶ Dr. Skelton,⁷ would give a special attraction and appeal to such an address by you in Canada.

Your visit, A Thoisig, to this great country will, I need hardly say, be a historic event, which will hearten our own people here as no other has done since this mission was established. It can do nothing but good.

The foregoing is just a general look at the arrangements generally. Mr. St. Laurent will be away for a week and I shall be away also. I am delivering the Graduation Address at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia on Wednesday. On our return Mr. St. Laurent and I will have another talk.

P.S. Since writing the above I have got the Department's cable informing me of the time you can spend out of Ireland and of your wishes re functions. We have been thinking along the same lines.